[TriLUG] Hard drive advice

[Maxwell Spangler]

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005, Andrew Perrin wrote:

> Any preferences out there for large-capacity ATA (not SCSI or SATA for
> this application) hard drives? I'd love to go near 300GB if possible but
> can do with less if necessary.

I've been using IBM/Hitachi, Western Digital and Maxtor for 80 to 250G drives 
in the last few years and can't really tell any signifcant difference between 
the drives themselves or the companies behind them.  All seem to have good 
diagnostic programs, useful websites and good RMA programs.

Do look for a long term 3-5 year warranty as we all known the things most 
likely to fail in your computer are the ones with moving parts and hard drives 
will definitely fail -- when is the only question.

One final note, if you're thinking about buying a single 200-400 GB drive for 
personal use, consider getting a second drive and using it for backup 
purposes.  You won't find any combination of cd, dvd or tape that is as 
cost-effective and time efficient than simply copying all your data from drive 
one to drive two with hard drive capacities being so large and cd, dvd and 
tape sizes and write speeds being so small and slow, respectively.

PS. My largest drive is a MAXTOR 250G PATA drive in an external BYTECC USB 
enclosure.. All from www.newegg.com and works great with Linux :)

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Maxwell Spangler
Chapel Hill, North Carolina